The Wolf's Marine

Found

It's around eleven o'clock and a man is still up watching tv. Farm work today was easy and he's got a lot of energy left because of it. What better way to get tired than watching tv?

It's a quieter scene when he hears something outside. He plays it off as an animal and continues watching his show. It's not until it's a louder scene and he can still hear the animal that he decides something's up.

He grabs his shotgun with intent of putting this animal out of its misery. He exits his house with a headlamp strapped to his head.

For whatever reason the crying is quieter now and he only hears a sniffle every now and then, making it hard for him to pinpoint its location.
He shines the lamp every direction in search of the crying animal but sees nothing.

A rustle a few feet ahead of him tells him the animal is close. He clicks the safety off of his shotgun and brings it up halfway, ready to pop this animal when he first spots it.

"It burns! It burns!" The animal screams. The man clicks the safety back on and lowers his gun, animals can't talk. He takes a few cautious steps forward and his light shines on the cause of all this noise.

His headlamp blinds the woman and for a few seconds she just stares at him with her back half turned to him. "Do you need help ma'am?" He asks her. She moves slightly and he spots a shotgun clutched tightly in her hands. He then sees the 9 mm and knife strapped to her waist.

"You have three heads!" She shrieks, scrambling backwards away from him. "Why is your skin blue?"

'This woman is clearly suffering from some kind of mental illness. I can't just leave her out here in this condition.' He thinks to himself.

He slowly sets his shotgun down and leans it against a nearby tree. Even slower yet, he moves his hands to his shoulders and makes a squashing motion. "There, now the heads are gone." He says in a soothing tone. She looks less afraid now.

With more slow motions he brushes his hands over his exposed skin in an attempt to brush the blue off. "Look, I'm not blue now." The fear is gone from her and she looks much calmer.

Being able to look at her face relaxed, the man swears he knows her from somewhere. "Storm?" He asks as he suddenly realizes who she is. "Mark? What are you doing out here? You should be indoors, there's a war going on!"

"I didn't know that. Why don't you bring me indoors?" Mark decides to indulge her on her little fantasy. He offers her his hand to pull her up. She moves the gun to one hand and with the other lets him pull her up. "I can do that."

Mark grabs his gun and Storm takes the lead. "How are you going to lead us back? You've never been to my house before." Mark asks, trying his best to keep up with the quick footed soldier. "You leave an obvious trail." She gestures towards the badly beaten down brush.

The two walk in absolute silence. What's there to say? Mark walked up on Storm at her most vulnerable and he does not want to make her feel bad about it.

The two are about thirty feet from Mark's house when Storm's freezes. "Quick, douse the light!" She whispers to him, practically climbing up him to cover the light. As weird as Mark finds her behavior he does as she asks and turns the light off. Storm climbs off of him and pulls him behind a big tree.

She puts a lone finger to her lips and then points to the side of the tree. She pokes her head out and Mark does the same. He about falls over in shock when he sees two gigantic wolves walking on his lawn.

Storm pulls her head back and Mark copies. "You take the one on the left and I'll take the one on the right. You have buckshot in, right?" She whispers. "No, I have birdshot in." Storm rolls her eyes at his idiocy and then hands him a shell from her shell belt.

The sound of him changing out shells causes the wolves' ears to twitch. The wolves turn to the sound and start to stalk towards the two humans. The unlikely duo pop out from behind the tree with the safety's clicked off. "Take 'em!" Storm whisper-yells. An almost in-sync boom follows. The wolf on the right tumbles to the ground but the one on the left only stumbles before getting back up.

Another boom and the wolf on the left crumbles. "I thought you were a good shot? You had lots of practice on Lassie." Storm grumbles, reloading her gun without even looking.

"I thought you forgave me for that!" Mark whines as the two approach the dead wolves. "Just because I forgave you doesn't mean I forgot what you did." Storm snaps back, nudging one of the wolves with her boot.

"Why are they so big and why are they here? Wolves don't live in these parts and they certainly don't get that big!" Mark says, copying Storm and nudging the other wolf with his boot.

"I told you, there's a war going on!" Storm exclaims. "I thought you were making that up." Mark answers. "No, this is real. They planned on lighting the pack house on fire to get this baby started but I killed the guys who were supposed to do that. I don't know how the war's going to go now that I changed their plans."

"Whoa, slow down there. Pack house? What is that?"

"Honestly, I don't really know what the pack house is. I've been inside once but I didn't learn anything about it. I just know it's a big deal. And to answer your first question, these are werewolves. They're rogues who plan on killing the pack that lives here."

Mark's mind is whirling as he processes this new information. "I'm going to need a drink before we continue this conversation."

"Make it quick, there's rogues out there that're hungry for a hunk of lead and I plan on giving it to 'em."

Inside his house, Mark pours himself a shot of bourbon. "Want one?" He offers. "No, I want you to hurry up." Mark smiles at her answer.

"I drink you explain. Deal?"

"Basically this rogue pack wants to kill the pack that lives in our town. I made myself out to be a traitor to get in and spy on them. I got assigned to light the pack house on fire and the guys with me blew my cover. I killed them and then had a PTSD episode. That's basically it."

"Then what are you doing out in the middle of the woods armed to the teeth?" Mark asks before taking a sip of his bourbon.

"How many times to I have to tell you, there's a war?! I'm going to kill as many of those rogues as I can before they can hurt the innocent pack members."

Mark tilts his head back and downs the rest of he shot. He wipes his mouth and then shoots his old friend a grin. "Let me go get my shell belt and then we can start mowing down these rogues."

Storm's shocked by Mark's behavior. She did not expect him to willingly volunteer to help her doing something life threatening.

"You do know you could be mauled to death out there?" Storm calls out after him. "I know, I'm making up my wrongdoings to you." Mark comes back out with a heavily loaded shell belt and a tomahawk.

"When did you get that?" Storm gapes at the weapon Mark's holstering to his hip. "A lot's changed since you've been gone." He replies, ditching his headlamp on the couch.

"Alrighty then, let's this hunt started!"